Jim Ingraham: For Cavs and Dan Gilbert, it's time to win

Michael Allen Blair/MBlair@21st-CenturyMedia.com
Cavs' owner Dan Gilbert gets a high five from new, old head coach Mike Brown after defeating the Nets 98-94 Wednesday at Quicken Loans Arena. Between the two is recording artist Usher.

The Cavaliers won 61 games in LeBron James’ last season with the team. They have won 64 games, total, in the three seasons since he left.
Season four began Wednesday night.
The vigil continues, and Dan Gilbert is on the clock. The Cavs’ emotional, free-spending, serial texter and owner/superfan has had his grace period. The honeymoon from the LeBron estrangement is over.
It’s time to win some games. It’s time to make a significant jump in the rebuild. It’s time for the Cavs to become relevant again.
“We’ve talked a lot about how long should it take once you hit the reset button,” Gilbert said Wednesday night, before Game 1 of Mike Brown, Part 2.
“There are a lot of ways to do it,” Gilbert said of the Cavs’ attempt to dig their way out of the post-LeBron mine cave-in. “We feel after three years, you should be competitive again.”
Over the past three years, the Cavs were as uncompetitive as any team in the league — over 100 games under .500 (64-166). That’s a winning percentage of .230. But in two of the three years since James left, the Cavs have had the No. 1 overall pick and the fourth overall pick in the draft.
This year they have made some astute free-agent signings, starting with veteran point guard Jarrett Jack, and they took a reasonable gamble in signing Andrew Bynum.
They also changed coaches, bringing back Brown, the coach they fired three years ago, speculation had it, because they felt it increased their chances of persuading James to stay in Cleveland.
Now, with James potentially able to return to Cleveland next year as a free agent, and with civic slobbering well underway over that possibility, the Cavs rehired the coach they thought James didn’t want to play for.
Hmmmmm.
The Cavs were rightfully given a pass for the past three years. You don’t lose the best player on the planet without some serious, long-term damage.
But the three years are over. The Cavs, and Gilbert, both need to be held to a higher standard this season. Gilbert sounds comfortable with that notion.
“There’s a different feel this year,” he said. “Expectations are higher than in other years. There’s a whole different chemistry being felt throughout the organization.”
Let’s hope so.
If Cavs fans had been any more patient during the three-year rebuild, they would be comatose.
This season they deserve to not just see the light at the end of the tunnel, but to emerge from the tunnel completely. It’s time to return to the sunshine of relevance.
“If we can avoid any catastrophic injuries, I think we could be a playoff team,” Gilbert said.
The Cavs owner acknowledges that expectations are high, and they should be. There has been a significant influx of talent, coupled with the purging of such roster caulk as Ryan Hollins, Luke Harangody, Omri Casspi, Jamario Moon, et al.
It’s an honest-to-goodness NBA roster this season, with NBA players filling out most, if not all of the uniforms, guided, according to Gilbert, by a new and improved head coach.
“Mike seems more confident and sure of the direction he wants to go,” Gilbert said. “He’s a defensive-minded coach who took some heat for his offense when he was here the first time. That doesn’t seem to bother him now. Hey, when we hired him the first time he was, what, 35? You can see the maturity in him now.”
Brown will seem even more mature and astute if Bynum can return to something close to the All-Star form he flashed before his knees did their impression of two flat tires, robbing him of an entire season.
The decision to rehire Brown will look even more impressive if the new/old coach can coax more defense and leadership out of Kyrie Irving, who replaced James as the franchise’s franchise player.
“Kyrie has shown a lot of growth this summer, and he’s still only 21,” Gilbert said. “I think Mike is going to be really helpful to him as a coach. We feel good about Kyrie being here his entire career. He and Mike have really hit it off.”
Opening day in any sport is always a time for optimism that can range from wild to calculated.
Wednesday night, Gilbert talked like an owner who is expecting big things in 2013-14, both as an owner and as a fan.
Of Cleveland’s three professional sports teams, Gilbert has been the one Teflon owner, rarely being criticized by the fans or media.
The Cavs are his team, and it’s time for his team to get good again. It has been three years, going on four.
It’s time, shall we say, to Quicken the pace.